This week Valve has changed how TF2 players are sent to all servers. The Valve servers you once knew are now all gone and have been replaced by "Competitive" and "Casual" game mode servers. If one of these two options isn't what you're looking for, you have to open the server browser and find one yourself. So long as they keep these changes, you will -never- join a non Valve server without using the server browser or connecting from outside of the game.

These changes can be summed up in four words - quick play is gone.

Depending on how you look at this, you can see good or bad news for community servers such as ours. Skiver has always been "somewhat" (roughly 15% of traffic) reliant upon quick play traffic as those random connections will often fill in the slots not taken by our regulars.

The bad news side of this is that server owners can EASILY abuse their players and once again offer game breaking advantages to anyone willing to pay to win. Valve has always tried to be "for the player" rather than "for the servers" and has worked hard over the years to give players an advantage over shady servers with the famous quick play rules and guidelines. A good example of this would be the advert plugin Pinion. Years ago they were the only company/plugin who offered a way for server owners to cut down on cost and needing to rely on donors, thus allowing for rapid growth. Using Pinion meant any player who wasn't flagged as "special" was forced to watch and listen to the MOTD screen for 30 seconds each time they were due to see an ad.

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This update changes a major part of TF2 and we must change with it or we will become yet another failed community. I am not going to let that happen. The changes I am about to announce are going to upset some people and hopefully make a lot people happy and excited.

Server Cuts:

- The Day of Defeat server is being cut. It gets a very small amount of traffic once or twice a week. Perhaps in the future we can attempt being a multi-gameserver community again.

Server Map Changes:

- Orange will be changing back to a more popular and recognized Orange map. I always wanted Skiver to have a server with our very own map, unfortunately it just doesn't make sense anymore to run a map with an average of 4 players.

- Class Wars #2 is being changed to a 24/7 Payload server. I am leaning towards either Goldrush or Thunder Mountain. We may attempt a 2nd Classwars server again in the future with something other than rotation.

Server Addition:

- We will be adding a custom game mode rotation server once I get all of the technicalities figured out. I am leaning towards Prop Hunt and FF or VSH. I am open to suggestions for this one.

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The server cuts and map changes will be effective/live with the upcoming daily restart. The custom rotation server will not be live for some time.

In all this vastness there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves